The Fusion Illusion Max Schulz o hear President Barack that power our lives. Moreover, the Obama tell it, we need to renewable energy technologies that Tfundamentally overhaul the the president prefers—like wind, way we produce, deliver, and con- solar, and biomass—now make up sume energy. After the House of only three percent of our electricity Representatives passed the Waxman- use, and an even smaller share of our Markey cap-and-trade bill in June, overall energy consumption. This the president said negligible por- it would “spark a Sun in a Bottle: tion of America’s clean energy trans- The Strange History of Fusion and the energy economy Science of Wishful Thinking formation in our comes despite the By Charles Seife economy. It will Viking ~ 2008 ~ 304 pp. fact that many spur the develop- $25.95 (cloth) $16 (paper) tens of billions of ment of low carbon dollars in state and sources of energy— everything from federal subsidies have been pumped wind, solar, and geothermal power to into renewables for roughly three safer nuclear energy and cleaner coal. decades. It will spur new energy savings, like It is these sources that the presi- the efficient windows and other mate- dent proposes should overtake and rials that reduce heating costs in the replace the fossil fuels that dominate winter and cooling costs in the sum- our current energy economy. He is mer. And most importantly, it will engaged in a staggering exercise in make possible the creation of millions wishful thinking. The limitations of of new jobs.” He repeated those senti- these technologies and fuels are well ments before the G-8 in Italy several known by now: they are prohibitive- weeks later when he stated, “One of ly expensive, they are intermittent my highest priorities as president is power providers, and they have a low to drive a clean energy transforma- energy density compared to fossil tion of our economy.” fuels. Renewables will one day play a That’s pretty ambitious, if not somewhat larger part in our energy audacious. Transforming our ener- economy—a majority of states have gy economy would require replac- passed laws in recent years mandat- ing the massive infrastructure and ing that utilities supply power from production and supply mechanisms them, costly as they are—but because 90 ~ The New Atlantis Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. The Fusion Illusion of their severe limitations, the contri- usion has been the Holy Grail of bution from renewable sources will Fenergy since long before anyone be marginal. ever worried about global warming Curiously, the Obama administra- or strategic dependency on OPEC. tion has been lukewarm in its sup- Since the dawn of the atomic age, posed support for nuclear energy, armies of scientists and researchers which is the one proven technology and government officials have invest- capable of generating large supplies ed billions of dollars and countless of reliable power while emitting no hours of toil and labor to replicate, in greenhouse gases. For instance, the a controlled environment, what the president appears to be pulling the sun is constantly doing: converting plug on the proposed Yucca Mountain matter into energy through a fusion nuclear waste repository, without reaction. To figure this out would providing an alternative method for be to solve humanity’s energy needs dealing with spent nuclear fuel. For once and for all. The development of all President Obama’s talk about a successful fusion power plants would post-carbon society, there appears put an end to all the economic, envi- to be little place in his thinking for ronmental, and foreign policy trou- nuclear power. bles that plague the current global Is it really possible that we can trans- energy regime. Unlike windmills and form our energy economy, phasing solar panels, the potential of fusion out the system that has grown more energy is virtually limitless. or less organically over the course of This vision has spurred a move- a century and replacing it with one ment of would-be discoverers light- powered by the clean, green sources ing out for the fame and glory that the president endorses? We would be would accompany the breakthrough wise to consider a similar exercise in of controlled fusion. A recent book wishful thinking about energy that chronicles this wild, oft-contentious has frustrated scientists and dream- scientific pursuit. Charles Seife, a ers for more than half a century. The former Science magazine writer and pursuit of fusion energy— essentially, the author of the heralded 2000 harnessing the force that powers bestseller, Zero: The Biography of a the sun—provides a cautionary tale Dangerous Idea, has written a live- for those who would remake today’s ly account of the history of fusion energy economy. It should be heeded research—“a tragic and comic pur- by those who so casually put their suit that has left scores of scientists faith in government’s ability to fos- battered and disgraced.” ter scientific breakthroughs that will Sun in a Bottle is an engrossing, render the current global energy accessible work that tells a fascinat- infrastructure obsolete. ing story about the quest for fusion. Summer 2009 ~ 91 Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. Max Schulz It is a story that covers the heights of supplies would be as inexhaustible as man’s knowledge of physics as well the oceans. as the depths of his vainglory—a Enrico Fermi conducted the first tale of great scientific achievement as self-sustained nuclear fission reaction well as the maneuverings of charla- in December 1942 under a squash tans, frauds, cranks, and modern-day court at the University of Chicago. alchemists. And it is a story of false Both the bombs at Hiroshima and hopes; the promise of fusion has for- Nagasaki were fission devices, and a ever been just a decade or two away. fission bomb turned out to be rela- Yet today the faith in fusion is, in tively simple to build; the key is just some quarters, as strong as ever. having enough fuel. A fusion reaction Fusion is, essentially, the opposite would be far trickier, both to start of nuclear fission, which is the pro- and to keep going for more than an cess used by our commercial nuclear instant. But if a fusion reaction could power plants to generate electric- be sustained for just a few fractions ity. With fission, atoms are split of a second, it was soon realized, the and energy is released. With fusion, energy it could produce would be atoms are made to stick together, and immense. the process converts a tiny portion In just seven years, researchers had of the mass of these atoms to pro- figured out how to build fusion bombs duce gargantuan amounts of energy. dwarfing those that ended the war That’s what happens on the sun, with Japan. The Ivy Mike blast on where hydrogen nuclei in the very the South Pacific island of Elugelab hot plasmas that make up its center in November 1952 was ten megatons, constantly slam into each other to or roughly the equivalent of explod- produce helium as well as energy. ing seven hundred Hiroshima bombs. This is the nuclear furnace at the In 1961, the Soviets detonated a heart of any star. It’s what makes the weapon (the “Tsar Bomba”) that was sun shine, and also threatens to blow five times more powerful than Ivy it up, but the sun does not explode Mike. “With Ivy Mike and its succes- because the intense force of its own sors,” writes Seife, “the fusion bomb gravity holds it together. scientists had succeeded at creating a While science and industry have tiny star on Earth.” been successful at producing power Uncontrolled nuclear fusion had from fission, fusion appeals to us been achieved. The challenge was because it is quite a bit more powerful to figure out how to produce a con- than fission. More than that, fission trolled and sustained fusion reaction. requires rare plutonium or uranium The energy potential from fusion for for its fuel, while fusion requires com- civilian purposes promised to dwarf mon atoms like hydrogen. Fusion’s civilian fission power just as the 92 ~ The New Atlantis Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. The Fusion Illusion H-bomb had dwarfed Fat Man and material they were using was “balo- Little Boy. ney”; the New York Times dubbed it This material is well-plowed the “Baloney Bomb.”) It soon became ground, though Seife does an excel- apparent even to Perón that Richter lent job distilling complicated ques- had not produced a controlled fusion tions of physics into something the reaction. He was a crank who had lay reader can easily understand. The conned Perón into believing they real value of Sun in a Bottle begins had saved the world—a huge inter- at this point, when Seife takes read- national black eye for Perón and ers on a journey over the numerous Argentina. attempts to create that sustained, Meanwhile, real physicists were controlled fusion reaction. It is a pursuing fusion with great zeal. story that goes to the heart of how Lyman Spitzer worked on a figure- science is done, and it drips with eight shaped reactor at Princeton drama, double-dealing, and politics. he called the Stellarator that would exploit the properties of plasma (a n early 1951, Argentine President hot phase of matter that makes up IJuan Perón made a startling the sun’s core) rather than trying to announcement: he claimed to have exactly replicate the hydrogen fusion solved the world’s energy prob- of atomic weapons.